Norwich lays claim to best master trust

Norwich Unionclaims it has the best master trusts in the Australian market, after a survey by Business Owner Research found that 17 per cent of dealer groups voted Norwich as the company with the best master trusts.

This result comes despite the technical problems Norwich has publicly acknowledged it has had recently with its flagshipNavigatormaster trust.

The survey was conducted of more than 170 Australian independent advisers and research managers from six leading dealer groups. The 17 per cent who voted Norwich the best provider was the largest group supporting any one master trust.

The Business Owner research also indicated that a quarter of the advisers surveyed predominantly used Norwich Union for superannuation, while only 1 per cent said they would not deal with Norwich for superannuation business.

Norwich group director of distribution and managing director of Norwich Union Life, Allan Griffiths, attributes Norwich’s popularity with advisers to its user friendly system.

“Norwich Union is popular with financial advisers because Navigator and Super Solutions use reliable and technologically advanced systems breaking new ground in the industry,” he says.

However, late last year Norwich admitted that Navigator had been plagued with problems since its official relaunch in August.

In December Navigator managing director Marc Mengler toldMoney Managementthat there were some teething problems but it was expected that these would be solved by the time advisers returned to their businesses in the new year.

At the time, Navigator was said to have slowed down to such a level after the relaunch that obtaining client data from its system became almost impossible. Navigator has also attracted some flak from advisers who raised questions about its margin lending calculators and some of the Department of Social Security (DSS) information on the system.

Doug Sumner, Norwich’s general manager, group products, says the problems initially experienced last year were the inevitable problems experienced with implementing “massive systems of that scale requiring using new processes and new training”.

Norwich says all calculators on the system are now performing to full capacity and that the DSS issue was solved when the latest version of Navigator’s PlanIT program was issued to advisers in October.